That's a great video. Wow, you really start to see some curvature at 100,000, don't you? Those mountains were scaring me. I couldn't tell how big they were, until I realized the tiny dots were trees! Keep up the good work.

I've just now started reading and posting on this forum but I don't think I've seen this question asked...How will you "park" the DSS? If you can't tell us due to wanting to keep your ideas propritary I will understand.

I'm glad you liked the videos. I'm working on next weeks. It shows a rocket launching from balloons. It's from a mission about ten years ago, but not many people have seen a real 'rockoon' in action.

We're still working on the launch date for Away 26. The vehicle is nearly ready, it's now a matter of crew scheduling and weather. The best guess (heavy on guess) is three weeks from now.

I'm going to reserve 10 PongSat slots for anyone on this forum who wants to fly on this mission. A PongSat is an experiment or other payload that fits inside a pingpong ball. It's amazing the experiments people come up with. Trinkets and personel items are OK, but please don't fly them and resell them, (that's our job). If you get your payload to us by March 5 it will make it on the flight. This is your chance to fly to the edge of space! After the mission you get your PongSat back along with a video from the flight and datasheet of the mission results. PongSats are totally free, (but it would be very cool if you bought a tee shirt).
There is a PongSat users guide PDF at www.pongsat.com , there's also a link to it from the main website: www.jpaerospace.com

I've always thought beamed power from the edge of space to the Earth or up to space has lots of potential. A solar power satellite without the launch costs....

There are two options for 'parking' the DSS. One is a slow drift around the globe. The power cost for true station keeping is impractical on the really large stations. There is enough manuverability to move North and South to avoid country overflight if permission for overflight is denied. The other option is to place the vehicle in the Artic vortex and circle the pole. The downside is radation shelding requirements are higher.

The answer may depend on how Russia thinks about private stations and vehicles flying above their territory. The same may be valid in the cases of China, North Corea and Cuba.

Even airplanes are not allowed to fly over foreign territory without permission and control. The problem will be that the technology of stations and vehicles like those of Bigelow Aeropsace doesn't provide any possibility to avoid flying over those territories. JPAerospace's Dark Sky Station and their vehicle have that possibility because they are in the atmosphere

Such properties and advantages of stations and vehicles may be of advantage in the future - in the eighties one time there were a short public discussion about the "chance" that some african countries may rise the boarders up to the orbits to claim money from the owners of the satellites.

Such properties and advantages of stations and vehicles may be of advantage in the future - in the eighties one time there were a short public discussion about the "chance" that some african countries may rise the boarders up to the orbits to claim money from the owners of the satellites.

Okay. In my experience as a college student who has taken a couple of history classes, there seems to be a sort of Law of Nature regarding laws of states: "A law can remain valid for an extended period of time if and only if it can be consistently, continually, and uniformly enforced."

So how would our favorite African countries care to enforce their sky-high claims? AK-47s don't quite reach to orbit. Would they care to charge a right-of-passage tariff on any Lunar colonists as well, since the Moon "passes over" their countries?

The idea of "airspace" has already been determined to end at the edge of the atmosphere. That was settled during the Cold War, when both the US and the Soviet Union wanted spy sattelites over each others' countries -- "Okay, we won't argue with yours if you don't argue with ours".

So how would someone choose to enforce an "orbital territory" claim? Of course, how does the UN intend to enforce that decision about nobody being able to own another planet (except the UN itself, of course)?

now if somebody can figure out how to do a beamed power experiment with a PongSat...

any ideas?

Hmmm ... make a tiny thermometer and stick it in the pongsat, hang the pongsat on the bottom of the craft and shoot your powersource (microwave laser?) beam at it. With a control pongsat on the ground you might be able to, when you retrieve your airborne pongsat, measure the efficiency of energy transfer, which may be useful in the design process of the powersource technology.

But then I don't really know what I'm talking about anyway. Also, that beamed power reference I used is way old.

Spacecowboy,
Remember that the DSS is not actually in orbit, merely near the upper atmosphere. With regards to owning the airspace above the country, all it takes to 'enforce' this ownership is the launch of a missile by a rogue nation. The 'law' doesn't need to remain valid for an extended period of time - it only needs to be valid once. Further, it only needs to be potentially valid at the present for it to be a realistic constraint. I'm not sure that many african nations are realistically a concern, however, as there are many more technologically advanced (read abilityand desire to develop and produce missiles with the required mass/propellant/explosive necessary to reach the target) nations with high ambitions and large chips on their shoulders. Besides, if you're going to put so much time and money into developing the DSS, why would you want to put it in a place where it may be at increased risk? While JP has developed the abilitry to strategically place it so that this can be avoided, I seriously doubt that the DSS would have the agility or power necessary to avoid immanent attack.

The fact that the cold war didn't result in the wanton destruction of the other side's sattelites does not entail that that wasn't a realistic possibility at the time. Sattelites then had minimal capability of launching an offensive action (while they did have an important intelligence-gathering role). Something like the DSS, which could serve as the launch-point for rockets (possibly earth-bound), could easily be construed as a possible threat, and would be 'denied overflight' privaleges